Global Rhythm Magazine Volume XV #2, February 2006

Ahmed MukhtarBy Bruce Miller

“I always compose music that embraces people of the world,” says Ahmed Mukhtar, which would be an admirable goal even if the speaker wasn’t a resident of Iraq, currently embroiled in a dire war understood by so few. Mukhtar is a master of the oud, and a practitioner of the maqam, an ancient form whose very existence is—like so much else in Iraq—threatened today. “Traditional music,” he says, “is the only music in the hearts and blood of the Iraqi people, so we have to put it to use.